A Man For All Reasons

On a crisp November afternoon Nicolas Berggruen holds court at the Beverly Hills Peninsula Hotel, which happens to be his home for up to six months of the year. While a harpsichordist entertains the hotel's guests, the fit, dark-haired and blue-eyed billionaire sits outside the hotel restaurant with a four-person entourage. Their table, which serves as his office for the moment, is strewn with notepads, a laptop and sparkling waters. The sleeves of his aqua blue button-down shirt are rolled up, and he clutches a BlackBerry, peering at it every few seconds.

The son of a world-renowned Picasso collector from Berlin, Berggruen is worth $2.2 billion. His business interests range from hydro- and wind power in Turkey to Spanish media and his most recent acquisition, German retailer Karstadt. Lately he's taken up a cause that has him particularly excited: fixing California's broken government. He created the Think Long Committee for California and backed it with $20 million of his own money.

While welcomed, the announcement raised a few eyebrows, if only because Berggruen is hardly a Californian. Since 2000 he's sold off his dwellings--a Fifth Avenue co-op and a Miami home--to travel the world by private jet and live in luxury hotels. He has no full-time residence.

Although he courts the press, Berggruen, 49, makes half-hearted attempts to protect his privacy: Where's he traveling to next? "On Wednesday I'm flying to . . . " He names a billionaire, adding the name is off the record. How does he unwind? Berggruen says he prefers books and work to beaches. Today, for instance, he enjoyed a three-hour lunch with a philosophy professor in which they discussed . . . sorry, that's off the record.

In creating Think Long, Berggruen plucked from his diverse connections, including such boldface names as former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, philanthropist Eli Broad and
Google
Chief Eric Schmidt. The group is still ironing out its agenda, but Berggruen would like such things as longer term limits, a broader tax base and decentralizing power from Sacramento to local government.

"Nicolas' genius is to understand that governance precedes philanthropy," says Nathan Gardels, a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute. "Nicolas, when he was 14, was writing constitutions. . . . Before he was a billionaire he thought about constitutions."

As Gardels expounds on how Think Long is developing "long-term structural ideas" to fix the state's broken government system, which is "a bellwether for the rest of the country," Berggruen glances at his BlackBerry. Suddenly he looks up. "The way I put it is that this country, in this past election, fought yesterday's war," he says. "California is already ahead; they're fighting the next war. The next war is actual reforms. And that's what our work is."

Berggruen does not plan to stop at California. He is also creating a global committee--the Nicolas Berggruen Institute 21st Century Council--to shadow the G20 and "address global challenges."

"I don't regret [being a businessman], but I regret that I didn't start this effort much earlier," says Berggruen, who later will be dining with an art world mogul whose name is off the record. "It's obviously a much bigger challenge than business and, frankly, more interesting. But I wanted to get a feel for the real world, so I went into business."